One reason I haven’t been blogging much lately is that I’ve been running phone banks in what little spare time I have. And if I didn’t say that here, you could have found out about it here. In the words of Kos diarist Mr. Jordan:

This was my first effort in any GOTV or Obama-related campaign activity (in this case, unofficial), and I enjoyed not just being able to help but the atmosphere among the small group—the same positive feelings that have been felt by millions across the country. I don’t have a car and took the train nearby, but others were kind enough to give me a ride from the local train station to the phonebank and also a ride back home (thanks!).

I appreciate Jordan’s kind comments, though he didn’t tell me he’d be blogging the phonebank. But that’s beside the point. His post is a reminder that, in the Web 2.0 world, you’re always on the record. True, Jordan didn’t ID me, instead calling me “the fellow who ran the phonebank.” But since the folks I was working for have already seen the post, I figured I should out myself here. I’m just glad I said no when Jordan asked if he could take my picture!

 
First time I saw this, I assumed it had to be Photoshopped. Nope. Oh, and Marc Ambinder’s having a caption contest.

See Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Throughout this campaign, it’s been seen as something of a truism that Senator Barack Obama is weak among white working-class males. Certainly Hillary Clinton was able to appeal more directly to that group, and the McCain-Palin ticket has continued to exploit that weakness. And in my brief canvassing experience, it became pretty clear that Obama’s support among this demo is pretty limited. In poor neighborhoods, Obama support was robust; in rich and upper-middle-class ones, it seemed almost a fifty-fifty split between the two parties. In working- and lower-middle-class areas, McCain support seemed much more robust, based on yard signs and other visible indicators. Obama may have made some inroads into this sector, but he’s still struggling.

At this point, I don’t think too many minds are going to be changed. And McCain, in his “Joe the Plumber” approach is clearly—and I suspect successfully—appealing to this group. And one troubling (for Obama) point about “Joe,” is that he represents a much broader definition of “white working class male.” Joe seemed to admit to making close to $250K, putting him in a pretty nice income bracket, especially for Ohio. When McCain sarcastically said, “Congratulations, Joe, you’re rich,” he could have been playing it straight. Of course, reality is much more complicated; Joe now claims to be earning much less. However, by implying that you could make $250K and still be “working class,” McCain has embraced a whole group of largely ignored voters: successful whites who don’t think of themselves as rich. These are the folks who started out in Brooklyn apartments and now have big houses on Staten Island; they’re the ones who rose through the ranks in fields like contracting, sales and, yes, plumbing, and now do very well, but still think of themselves as working class, based on their roots and career paths. 

The good news for Obama, if Staten Island is any indication, is that this group already votes Republican; they were never in contention to begin with. The bad news is that, even when Obama’s policies might actually help them, they’re still likely to vote for McCain no matter what. Just look at Joe, himself. In an interview this morning, he admitted to making much less than $250K, which means he’d actually benefit from Obama’s tax plan. Yet, while refusing to say who he’d vote for, he praised McCain as having some “real solid points” in the debate, and called Obama’s health-care plan “one more step toward socialism.” Joe may be officially undecided, but his real intentions are clear. He falls into the faux undecided camp that I discussed earlier. Obama won’t win him over, and at this point, I suspect he’s going to stop trying. The non-union white-working class will vote Republican, if they vote at all, and Obama will need to make up those votes with other groups.

Much has been made about the differences between Barack Obama and John McCain when it comes to technology. And most of the comparisons are pretty accurate. While McCain boasts that he doesn’t use email, Obama has an iPhone app, a highly sophisticated web site, and even does in-game campaign ads. The latest twist from Obama has to be one of the most intriguing: social campaign contributions.

What the Obama campaign has done is a twist on the traditional “matching donor” model, where contributors are encouraged to support a cause with the lure of a “match” -– typically from a well-heeled individual or foundation—that essentially doubles the donor’s impact. In the Obama model, however, recurring donors are encouraged to contribute a little more, as the matchers for new donors. The social element? You can write a personalized email to your matchee, and that donor can then respond to you. The communication can be anonymous, or you can swap email addresses and take the conversation out of Obamaland and into the real world.

I don’t know how many new donors the matching campaign is attracting, but I know it got me—and “Richard P. in Silver Springs, MD”—to fork over a few extra bucks. If the model works, I can see other causes adopting it—and can see donors forming new networks around their favorite causes.

  This is the second installment of my “Five things I learned on the trail” series. You can read the first part here.

2. Students and poor voters are underrepresented in polls.
It probably comes as no surprise that polls underrepresent college students and poor voters. Several factors cause these population groups to be undercounted, including their lack of landlines, the transient nature of their housing and, in some cases, a distrust of phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. And I believe that the number of “missing” students and poor voters is significantly higher than pollsters have estimated. Let’s take college students. According to some studies, cell phone penetration among college students is close to 90% (I actually think it’s closer to 100%, but let’s go with published studies for now). And about a third of 18-29 year-olds only use cell phones and VoIP for their calls. According to the U.S. census bureau, there are close to 30 million 18-24 year-olds in the U.S., so if we assume a third of them don’t have landlines, that’s 10 million missing voting-age Americans. Poor voters are also less likely to have landlines; one study estimated that 16% of those with incomes under $15,000 per year were cell-phone only, versus 9% of the general population.

So, based solely on the cell-phone factor, it seems likely that a significant number of young and poor voters are being undercounted by pollsters. And even if pollsters are weighting their results to compensate, there’s no way to know whether they’re doing so in a way that accurately represents this population. The Obama campaign has been very successful in its efforts to register younger and poorer voters – which I saw clear evidence of in some of the neighborhoods I visited when canvassing, not to mention the sheer number of people at the Obama rally I attended, which took place in a neighborhood that was both somewhat economically depressed and adjacent to a major college. Obviously, I can’t prove that the undercounted poor and young voters are going to break for Obama, but I think it’s extremely likely. And these voters may more than compensate for the aversive racists, who may be inflating the number of “undecided” voters.

However, the impact of these voters is far from assured. For one thing, some first-time voters may be deterred from voting if they feel an Obama victory is assured. Another, perhaps bigger, factor, could be voter suppression and intimidation, something which media reports indicate is already taking place. Many such efforts target the poor, including those who may have lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis. Journalist Greg Palast and activist Robert Kennedy Jr. have studied the issue, and believe voter suppression, intimidation and other shady tactics could disenfranchise millions of voters. Fortunately, the Obama campaign seems far better prepared for this than either Kerry or Gore were, but that doesn’t mean some legitimate, registered voters won’t be turned away or have their ballots invalidated. And in a close race, those uncounted votes could make a big difference, as we’ve seen in the past.

I just spent three days canvassing for Barack Obama in Pennsylvania. I won’t claim this makes me an expert about the election. However, I do think I learned a few things that help provide some context to the polls, which continue to show Obama well ahead of McCain. I’ll lay out my thoughts over the next couple of days, starting with the first one, here:

1. There are very few truly undecided voters—but "aversive racists" could decide the election.
With just three weeks to go until the election, I believe the vast majority of voters have made up their minds. And most will vote along party lines, as they do in just about every election. Yet some recent polls continue to show as much as 11% of the electorate to be undecided. That’s inconsistent with historical numbers; by this point in 2004, for example, some state polls showed just 4% of voters to be on the fence. So, what’s the real story?

To put it bluntly, I believe most "undecided" voters are actually what Nicholas Kristof recently referred to as "aversive racists"—people who have unconscious racist tendencies that they don’t even admit to themselves. I came across numerous "undecided" voters in my door-knocking work, including some with "D" and even "L" next to their names on my list. None were openly hostile to me, but virtually all declined my offer of additional information to help them make up their minds. These voters, I believe, had made their choice, but didn’t want to admit it, even to themselves.

My experience jibes with recent reports like the one in yesterday’s New York Times that provides some perspective on the "Bradley effect," and quotes Adam Berinsky, an M.I.T. professor who has written about "I don’t know" voters. According to Berinsky, New York voters who felt uncomfortable voting for David Dinkins in his 1989 run against Rudolph Giuliani because of Dinkins’ race, were more likely to tell pollsters that they didn’t know who they would be voting for. Dinkins won, but did so by just 2%, despite polls that showed him ahead by as much as 14%.

Does this mean polls need to show Obama with a similar lead in order for him to win? Or that we can assume that all but about 4% of today’s undecideds are really in McCain’s corner? No, of course not. The numbers are inexact enough, and disparities among various polls large enough, that it’s hard to know for sure how many false undecideds are really out there. And I believe (or, perhaps, want to believe) that we are also living in another era, one in which the race of a candidate is simply not an issue for the vast majority of American voters. However, in a close election, the vast majority may not decide the winner. As Pew’s Andrew Kohut commented in the Times, “How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question. I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And ‘maybe some’ could be crucial in a tight election.”

However, the aversive racists aren’t the only uncountable group that may play a crucial roll in this election – and other factors may well be working in Obama’s favor. More on that next time.

As a TPM reader comments:

If a Dem had made that statement (my fellow prisoners) and in that context, the repubs would loudly proclaim the man mad as a hatter and unfit for the presidency. And judging from other recent actions, he may very well be unfit and it would not be a service to the country to gloss it over.